What a treat! Last week I had the privilege of welcoming the award winning chef Nathan Outlaw to the Davidstow Creamery.
Nathan kindly took time out from his very busy schedule to see first hand how Davidstow Classic and Crackler are made and how the cheese is graded (my bit! – see future BLOG’s for what a Grader does). It is this hands on approach, thirst for knowledge and genuine interest that
sets Nathan apart.
The other reason for Nathan’s visit was to select some very special 3-year-old Davidstow cheddar for his restaurant.
Maturing cheese through to 3 years of age is a fine balancing act of delivering on intensity and complexity rather than just brute strength. There are sadly too many ‘Vintage’ Cheddars that are just plain obnoxiously strong with all the subtlety of a Bernard Manning one liner! An old cheese that makes your mouth burn, your toes curl, the back of your neck go cold while sweating profusely from the hair-line is not a great experience.
However a 3-year-old cheese with a texture as flinty as the North Cornish cliffs, with a more than generous splattering of calcium lactate crystals and a luxuriously smooth mouthfeel is a different cup of tea (to mix my metaphors!). The flavour is very difficult to describe. As soon as you feel you’ve identified a flavour another one kicks in. The first taste experience is that of intensity and depth of flavour. The flavour is big but beautiful; there are subtle notes of sweetness, caramel notes, moderate acidity and a lingering creaminess. Also, there is a hint of ‘dark chocolate’ that always makes me wonder whether it’s really there or not?
So as I dry up on superlatives and look at the bottle of Doom Bar (the Cornish beer touched by greatness) on my lounge dresser I realise that a glass of said snifter and a Desperate Dan sized slab of 3-year-old Davidstow calls louder that another paragraph of one-finger typing.
But it does remind me that as Nathan has exclusive access to this wonderful cheese I must revisit his truly outstanding restaurant this summer – goodness me it’s good. I’m dribbling more than ‘Sammy the St. Austell salivater’ with a whole packet of fruit pastels in his mouth.
Dyw genowgh,
Mark-the-grader
